As do many industries, the cigarette manufacturing industry has finished products, cartons of cigarettes, that are not satisfactory for shipment or that have been returned by reason of being out of date, damaged or withdrawn from the market, such as products left after marketing trials. Most of the tobacco in the cigarettes is of good quality, and because of the high cost of tobacco, it is highly advantageous economically to recover the tobacco for use in the manufacture of new cigarettes.
The reclaiming of the tobacco from the finished, packaged product requires, of course, first opening the cartons and packs, then removing the cigarettes from the packs and finally separating the tobacco from the cigarette wrappers and the filters (in the case of filter-tipped cigarettes).
A part of the tobacco reclaiming process that has proven to be very troublesome to carry out using high speed automatic equipment is that of opening the packs in such a way as to leave the packaging materials (cellophane outer wrapper, paper wrapper and foil inner wrapper) in large pieces, that is, free of small pieces that are not easily separated later on from the tobacco. Also, it is desirable, but not easy, to separate the tobacco from the cigarette wrappers and filters (where involved) in a manner that leaves large pieces of wrappers and largely intact filter plugs, free of slivers and other small pieces.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,386,320 (Pinkham et al., June 4, 1968) it is proposed to open cigarette packs by slitting the wrappers lengthwise along each narrower side and then cutting the entire packs and cigarettes into two parts transversely using rotating cutting blades. U.S. Pat. No. 4,036,380 (Berry et al., July 19, 1977) describes and shows a machine for cutting off both narrower side walls of cartons and both end walls of the packs and then blowing on the cigarettes with air jets. It is well known that cutting paperboard and paper with blades is a tricky operation; the blades must be kept very sharp, and even with sharp blades making clean cuts without tearing off slivers and small fragments is virtually impossible. As a result, machines using blades to cut open packs have not been used extensively in the industry.
Equipment for ripping open cartons and packs and for separating the cigarettes in a cyclone separator is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,083,499. The cartons and packs are literally beaten apart by impacts of the blades of a ripper fan and by hurling them against breaker rods. Because of the random nature of the impacts, the equipment is prone to producing small fragments, and the opportunity for the wrapping materials to get caught upon the blades and pins and to be torn when they break away further contributes to production of small fragments of wrapping materials that are difficult to separate from the tobacco.
The main thrust of the apparatus of U.S. Pat. No. 4,622,875 (Emery et al., Nov. 18, 1986) is the sorting of different types of cigarettes, for example by brands, by features (menthol/non-menthol or filter/non-filter) or by capability/non-capability of reuse, for opening in separate conveyors using water jets. No mechanical details of the apparatus for transporting and handling the packs being opened are described or shown in the patent disclosure. It is generally known in the industry that equipment using at least some of the technology of this patent was built but that there were so many problems with it that it is no longer in use. The extent to which it was used successfully is not known.